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The Washington Nationals—baseball’s new champs– will be parading in DC over the weekend, and I hope all the politicos in town will be there to remember what it was like to be on the same team.

Because the people in the nation’s capital have forgotten.

I used to live in the DC-area and except for the cold, I really loved it.

Now it’s cold even in the summertime–that’s how severe the political polarization has set been.

Maybe the Nationals can fix that.

When it comes to baseball, you know my team is the San Francisco Giants. I gloated about them in 2012.

Again when they won n

And how in the 2014 NLCS we had Asian American stars duking it out.

The Giants won in 2010 as well, making it three times in five years they won it all in baseball. What a feat. Now the Giants are among the worst teams in baseball, and the Nats? I admit, I didn’t like them when I visited DC last summer.

The Nats were the Gnats, but that’s a syllable away from GIANT, and by the end of a fabulous Game 7 on Wednesday to cap off an immensely entertaining World Series, the Nats were giant.

The Giants beat them in years past, but this year the Nats were the wild card team that kept hope alive. There was Rendon, Strasburg, Scherzer, and Soto. And don’t forget Kurt Suzuki, the first Asian American to hit a homerun in the World Series.

The Nats never gave up and just when you thought they were dead, they would come back. The Game 7 homers from Anthony Rendon and Howie Kendrick were special.

And now the celebration in Washington.

When the Giants won, there were hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco. In Washington, they’re expecting similar throngs. Maybe more than a Trump inaugural.

But one thing that happens in baseball, especially when a team has never won–like the Giants in 2010 or the Nats in 2019–you want to start looking at everyone you see with what I call baseball love.

This is genuine Abner Doubleday, handlebar mustache kind of love.

You go up to strangers, especially those you wouldn’t dare be seen with in public, and high-fiving every one, Purell be damned.

But when your team (like the Nats) hasn’t won EVER in the modern day of internet and even television, well, then high-fives aren’t enough. You get the hugs out. And everyone hugs everyone.

I’m just warning you, DC. If you fought for baseball during the decades-long drought that finally ended the void left by the Washington Senators and brought in the Expos from Canada, well, this is a special victory celebration.

It took a while to shake off the Expos’ spirit, but it finally happened. The Nats won it all.

And now you walk down the street and all roads lead to the emotions of that game 7 victory, and you can really feel it. We’re all one. You find yourself in one group hug after another.

Unity. Remember that?

Nationals fans will have that on Saturday.

Maybe it will rub off on all of America.

We need to be reminded that we’re all on the same team. Especially right now.

FROM NATIONAL PASTIME TO OUR PUBLIC IMPEACHMENT
Trump may have been booed at Nationals Park when he showed up at a game.

But what can I say? Baseball knows a bum when they see one. And in DC, what’s his team?

The New Yorker who now declares himself a Floridian is abandoning the Yankees for the Marlins. He’s been on all sides politically in the past. His only loyalty is to Team Trump.

And that’s what you need to understand as the impeachment proceedings go public.

We need to be on Team America, waving the Constitution.

Someone says “checks and balances,” we high-five.

Someone says “no one is above the law,” we hug.

Someone says “article 2,” we read the Constitution, chapter and verse, especially the part about the oath of office where one swears to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Impeachment is the World Series of politics. From the way it looks, this one’s going to game seven.

And Trump has Fox prime time and Twitter and all his trolls to make sure his vision wins.

But it’s not what’s good for Trump. It’s what’s good for our country.

When a president uses military aid to Ukraine–your tax money—as a tool to get dirt on his own political opponent, that’s good for just him, not us. And what of our national security? The self-interest of the businessman is not in the interests of our country.

As the hearings become public and out in the open, it will be subject A, and all of it will be on television. Trump will finally get a reality show that counts. And so will the rest of us.

The facts will come out. Truths will be exposed. So will the lies. Partisans will bicker. Seeing through the political PR won’t be easy.

Hopefully, what comes of this is a vigorous public debate with views from more perspectives than just the political class.

Be engaged. Talk to each other. Email your representatives in government. Let them know what you think..

Our country’s sense of diversity requires that the people heard in this process aren’t limited to the white males in the House and Senate expressing their views in the mostly white media.

An impeachment inquiry exists because there’s a threat to the legitimacy of the Constitution and the rule of law.

And keep in mind this thing called diversity.

Diversity, after all, assumes there’s a place for everyone in a democracy like America– except for a king.

Remember that Nationals feeling.

We are on the same team.